Howard Storm was an atheist until he had an extraordinary near-death experience. After that, everything changed. Indeed, he is now a Christian minister. His book, My Descent into Death, shot to prominence globally after the novelist Anne Rice called it a book you devour from cover to cover, and pass on to others.

She added that Storm was meant to write it and we were meant to read it.

Storm recently spoke to me from his home in Kentucky. He recounted going out to San Francisco in 1967, aged 19, in pursuit of the hippy dream.

We earnestly were going to create a culture of peace and love, he says, but because it was so hedonistic and anarchistic it was doomed to failure. We soon began to see our contemporaries being destroyed by the excesses of drugs and sexuality.

Disillusioned by hippiedom, religion and mainstream American society, he became increasingly nihilistic. He says he turned to total narcissism: Im no longer interested in changing the world … Im going to live for myself.

Storm rose through academia and took a job as a professor of art in Kentucky where he says that the overwhelming majority of the faculty were atheists and hedonists.

Being cynical gives you a false and inflated sense of superiority, he says. You can look down on all the ignorant fools who go to church and believe in religion.

The sad part of it is we conveyed those attitudes to our students. Many students came from homes where faith was valued. After a few short years in university they had nothing but contempt for faith. I think it was a horrible thing that we did.

Storms life changed during a field trip to Europe in 1985. One morning, aged 38, he collapsed in his hotel room with a perforated duodenum. No surgeon could be found, and after hours in agony he knew that it was over as he fell unconscious.

I fully expected that to be it: lights out, end of story, he says. Then, I found myself standing next to my bed, feeling wonderful. My senses were very heightened. The pain was gone. I tried to communicate with my wife. I thought she was ignoring me. I also noticed an occupant in my bed who bore a remarkable resemblance to me. I knew that person was dead.

Then I heard people calling me from outside the room, saying: Its time for you to go. Hurry up. Lets go. They said: We know all about you. Weve been waiting for you. I thought they were from the hospital.

But when he stepped out into this hallway it was very dim, grey and fuzzy, like a really bad black-and-white television picture.

He says: I went in to this hallway and had a very clear sense that the portal back into the room was somehow closed. I could never go back. The people led me away, and the hallway subtly became darker and darker and darker over a long period of time. Eventually, I realised that I was in complete darkness, encircled by a crowd of people and overcome with fear. I said to them: I want to go back. And they started pushing and pulling at me. The more I fought, the better they liked it. They were biting and scratching and tearing at me, all the while yelling and screaming.

Later on, I realised that they were people like me, who had rejected God and had lived for their own selfish gratification. Their wish had come true: this is what they had. In the place they inhabit theres no light, no birds, no joy, no hope, no love… a bunch of rats in a cage.

They screamed and tortured him for an age, he says. Eventually, I was too ripped up and defeated to do anything. I was solid pain. The real pain is the emotional pain. They did things that I dont talk about degrading things.

I was lying there, when I heard a voice say: Pray to God. I said: I dont pray. I dont believe in God. Then, it came a second time; and a third: Pray to God.

So, tried to think of a prayer. I started to mumble some things. A mention of God came into a few of these phrases. With each mention the people around me became very, very angry, and started screaming at me: There is no God and Nobody can hear you. It angered them so much that they were retreating from me. The mention of God was unbearable to them. Encouraged, he mumbled other jumbled half-remembered phrases: Glory, glory hallelujah, God Bless America, Our Father who art in heaven 

Eventually, he found himself alone in this dark place. Thinking over his life he found it gravely wanting. He felt he deserved to be where he was.

I felt that there was some kind of justice in the universe and that if you lead a miserable life you go down the sewer pipe of the universe into the septic tank. And thats where I was. Yet I knew I hadnt been flushed down into the deeper part, just yet.

In that state of hopelessness I had a memory of myself as a child in Sunday school, singing Jesus Loves Me. I also had a vivid feeling of being a child and feeling that there was a wonderful God-man named Jesus who was my friend and who loved me. With real sincerity, I called out: Jesus, please save me. With that, a tiny light appeared in the darkness and it came down over me. Out of this light came two hands. They reached down and touched me, and all the gore and filth that was me just fell away.

In two or three seconds I was healed and filled with an indescribable love. In this world there is no equivalent to that kind of love. These arms picked me up and brought me into this brilliant light. I was held against the body of this man. I knew that he was Jesus. I cried.

We were moving straight up, faster and faster towards the world of light. It dawned on me then that everything I had believed in was wrong, and I was going to where God lived. I thought: Theyve made a terrible mistake. I dont deserve this. Im garbage.

At that thought, we stopped, and he spoke to me for the first time, and said: We dont make mistakes. You do belong here. He had responded to my thought. He laughed and said: I know what youre thinking. I know everything youve ever thought. Then he called out in musical tones and a group of beings of light  angels  who had recorded my life came. They began to show me my life, starting with my birth.

Storm says they showed him scenes he had no memory of, like being a baby and his sisters playing with him. But as his life unfolded into adolescence and adulthood things started going downhill.

It became painful, because I saw that when I did bad things, I knew that it caused Jesus and the angels actual pain. It hurt them. So, here I am hanging in space, between the worlds of light and dark, watching my life. I am being held by Jesus, but I can see that I caused him actual unhappiness. It was just so shameful.

He says that the only thing they showed me was how I interacted with people. They showed no interest in his awards, promotions or other worldly achievements.

It became evident that the primary thing was how I had loved other people. I had done very poorly. I had failed Gods expectations of what I was supposed to be doing, which was caring for other people.

As to how long this process took, Storm says that there was no perception of time, but when I try to frame it in our time, I say, it took longer than graduate school, which for me was three and a half years.

Eventually, he was told he wasnt ready for heaven and would have to go back to earth. I was very upset, he says.

Reluctantly, after some resistance, he accepted his fate. Then, instantaneously, he was back in his body in that Paris hospital, being prepared for surgery.

Afterwards his life changed utterly. He could no longer go back to his old ways. His friends met his story with rejection, ridicule and scorn. But he found new friends at Bible study groups. Gradually he became more and more involved in his church, eventually becoming a minister in the United Church of Christ. In this capacity he works closely with Catholic Church in Latin America. He argues that God sees the Church as one Church and that all the divisions are manmade.

This one Church, he says, should be out there risking their pretty vestments, pursuing those lost souls, gripped by the nihilism and atheism, now running rampant across the western world.

-—Storm rose through academia and took a job as a professor of art in Kentucky where he says that the overwhelming majority of the faculty were atheists and hedonists.-—

Which explains why modern art is worthless, and why I decided to skip art school. I went to engineering school instead, but fell into the same narcisstic trap. By the grace of God, I was able to escape the worldly lifestyle and became... an artist.

This past Monday I had the most surreal day of my life. I believe my mother, who recently passed, sent this gentleman into my life. As an adopted child, my adoptive father killed himself in 1967 and I have carried a hatred for him all my life, though I never knew the man. (I was 2 when he committed suicide). Through fate I was at my studio when I shouldn’t have been and this guy shows up who bears the same name as my adopted name. (I legally changed my last name before marriage/family). Through our conversation he revealed to me that he was killed in a private plane crash in the mountains of Tennessee, yet here he was to tell me his story of being sent back by Jesus. There are many other aspexts to my story of that day wich would take too long to relate here but at the end of the day I had a clarity that I never had before. Any shred of doubt of God, Jesus or heaven is forever gone after hearing the story and its effect on me.

9
posted on 04/13/2012 6:16:37 AM PDT
by Finatic
(I ran out of change and have given up on hope. FUBO, I am so sick of your sorry a$$ you effin punk)

>>While Catholics may disagree with Storms final assessment, the story is insightful, especially in terms of life after death.<<

As a Catholic, I see a miracle for a man who left this Earth before his time. Our Lord gave him a gift because He had a bigger plan for him. Pity he chooses to divide instead of bringing people to God. I’ve known MANY good people who Love the Lord and don’t care how people come to Him, as long as they do.

A strange thing happened to me once. I never shared it online but did speak with a few close family members about it.

I had a cousin who was two months younger than me. He was always the type who wanted to be the first to deliver news to the rest of the family or neighborhood. Whether it was a car accident down the street or a house fire or even a death in the neighborhood he always raced to our grandparents 3 family house to be the first to tell about it. My brother Michael and I would laugh among ourselves about this. If something in the neighborhood had happened my brother and I and our cousin would head back to the house to tell the rest of the family. We would watch our cousin as he sped up his walking the closer we got to the house. My brother and I would just smile at each other.

Just before the age of 29 my cousin had died of a sudden illness not known to the family until after he had died. He had blood clots in his leg and one of them went to his heart and killed him.

The moment this had happened I was alone at home (in another town 15 minutes from the 3 family house). It was late in the morning and I was sleeping at the time as I had a 3rd shift job.

My mom got the news of my cousin's death where she worked. Evidentally somebody in the family had called her job to give her the news. Since I took her to work earlier in the morning she had to call me to give me the news and to go and pick her up from work so she could be with her brother during this terrible time.

Well, my phone rang and rang because I was sleeping. The sound of the phone ringing was most likely what caused me to dream that I got out of bed, went into the kitchen to answer the phone.

Me: "Hello?"

My cousin's voice: "Guess what! Michael just died"

Me: "What?"

I woke up suddenly and quickly sat up on the bed. That dream scared me. I never dream about death or people dying especially family members not to mention my own brother. The phone was still ringing. It must have been why I dreamed that I was answering the phone, I supposed. It had been ringing for quite some time now so I rushed to answer it.

Me: "Who? Johnny?" (Johnny was another cousin addicted to crack and cocaine and was always assumed to be found dead at some point because of it)

My mom: "No. Kevin. I need you to come now and pick me up..."

I had never forgotten that call. I am one who can explain many of my dreams by connecting it to something that had happened to me unusually during the day before I had fallen asleep but this one I could never explain.

It was a dream that let me know that something must happen after death. That we do continue. To this day I have yet to tell this to my aunt and uncle. Years have passed since and I'm thinking about telling them about that dream.

I worked with a man who was very religious and very up on the Bible.He is the person to go to when you have a question on the Bible because he can quote chapter and verse,old and new testament.
He and I are of different faiths{ I am Catholic} and he never tried to convert me. He said the same thing you said. It doesnt really matter what faith as long as you accept Christ.
But dont ask him how he feels about Jehovah Witnesses.....

15
posted on 04/13/2012 6:30:06 AM PDT
by Yorlik803
(better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)

Im such a sinner myself and I only hope that I can meet Christs expectations.

What Expectation?

This man's story sums it up very well. All our righteous acts are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). The expectation of Christ and the New Covenant is just that: Believe. Understand that "I'm Garbage"...I DESERVE hell...and apart from Christ's atoning death on the cross...I would spend eternity there and rightfully so. This is the expectation of the Gospel. That is the Good News.

Mother Teresa or Billy Graham do not deserve heaven more than you...and Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot do not deserve hell more than I. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory...and all deserve to be eternally punished for that...since that is the wage of our sin. But thanks be to Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, who died on a cross so that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish...but have everlasting life. There is no other expectation.

Amen!
If anyone truly believes this story, they cannot possibly think that God will look at a Catholic who said a rosary every day, or a Pentecostal who speaks in tongues, or an Evangelical living their lives according to “Left Behind” and say anything less than, “Good job faithful servant.”

On 7 Jan 2008 I emerged from a 3-day chemically induced coma following a coronary bypass graft procedure which went terribly wrong. The vessel from my first procedure a quarter century earlier had adhered to my sternum, and when they cracked my chest, sploosh, blood everywhere, and the team had to develop a Plan B on the fly. It worked, but only just. As they were bringing me back, I was in terrible pain because the nurses were pulling tubes out of my throat. At that moment, I was convinced that I was on my way to hell. I had gone to confession a couple of months earlier and figured that it didn’t work and I was doomed for eternity. Eventually I figured out that I was alive and saw my family at the foot of my bed in ICU. If I hadn’t been a believer before, that incident would certainly have made me one. Deo Gratias!

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not going to let my human frailty get in the way of leading by example. No one said that we should be hiding the truth and not instructing others, but my religion is my religion. Someone telling another person HOW to worship God is not part of it.

The near occasion of sin should be the concentration. We are supposed to teach about that. Not whether we say a rosary, meet in a storefront or read Harry Potter. That is simply human ego talking.

Im such a sinner myself and I only hope that I can meet Christs expectations.

Christ died for sinners like us - for all our sins past, present and future - we are washed clean by his death and resurrection. When asked, the Holy Spirit empowers us to do the things of God. Christ commandments are to love God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. Sometimes I find loving my neighbor as myself a struggle during these Godless times. But, each day is new and reaffirming our commitment to do as Christ wants can be renewed. We are children of the living God and if a sinful father can love his children, think how much more Christ loves us.

Nope. God loves you and wants you to be happy with Him forever. Just ask Him.

I did. I asked God to be happy and with Him.

Right then, a bush burst into a fire, but the fire didn't consume the bush. I heard a loud rumbling, and the clouds parted, and the light shone down upon me. I heard a booming voice say, "I AM YOUR GOD, THE FATHER, THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, AND I CREATED YOU. And, it turns out, creating you was a huge mistake. You suck. I don't like you at all. In answer to your question: No, you cannot be with me. No, you won't be happy. You kinda remind me of a diseased lemur, only without the cuteness. I was thinking of squashing you like a grape, but it's more fun to poke you and watch you squirm."

28
posted on 04/13/2012 7:57:42 AM PDT
by Lazamataz
(Shut up and drill.)

On this we must agree to disagree.
Does Christ care about how we believe in Him? Does he care wether we add a few extra lines to the Lord prayer or if we attend Mass or services?
The Lord gave us a clear text on how to live. It is up to each and everyone on how we read and interpret his words.
But I am not a scholar of such things.

33
posted on 04/13/2012 8:17:53 AM PDT
by Yorlik803
(better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)

-—Someone telling another person HOW to worship God is not part of it.-—

What if my worship of God includes instructing others? Aren’t you instructing me?

Regardless, I wasn’t speaking about forcing my faith on others. I was speaking of moral truth, in addition to intellectual truth. Moral truth is simply the natural law, written on the human heart, which is accessible to everyone.

The natural law, right and wrong, cannot not be known, which is why Scripture tells us to exhort and reprove one another. We must do so prudently.

Remember that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference.

Similarly, we are obligated to evangelize prudently. But in contrast to moral truths, the truths of faith may not be known or understood. Since faith is a gift, the truths of faith can only be presented.

I think Christ does care how we believe in him. Think about it. He sent the Holy Spirit to the first believers so they could record his ministry in words. Why? So that all future generations of believers would have those words, and through them the memory of what he said and did. Why go to all that trouble if the words are not important? It makes no sense. And in those words he teaches many things, some that are still hard to accept. He also warned of false Christs, people who would come later and pervert the truth. These false prophets are known by their fruit, and they have no future with God, other than to wait for judgment.

So you see, unless one is trying to be a false prophet, it is not up to everybody to cast their own private filter over the teaching of Christ, picking and choosing what they like, and ignoring the rest. When he teaches for example that Gods design for marriage consists of a man and a woman in permanent union, he implies that God did NOT design the alternatives to that arrangement conceived by the warped mind of sinful humans. Or by affirming the authority of the commandments, he rejects idolatry, lying, stealing, adultery, coveteousness (aka greed), etc. Most importantly, by establishing faith in him as the sole basis for human redemption, he excludes all alternative schemes for human salvation.

Furthermore, he, in his own words, taught that to reject him as the Son was to reject the Father. If his words mean anything at all, they mean that a) we cannot look to our own man-made religious divisions as the source of our salvation, and b) neither can we just make stuff up about him and hope for the best. God is not mocked. What we sow we will reap. If we sow a foolish unwillingness to learn and obey his words, we will reap self-deception, error, and harm to ourselves and others. If we sow an earnest desire to know and obey him and the doctrine he gave us in his words, then we will know truth, and that truth will free us, and we will be that tree that bears good fruit.

As Ben Franklin said, “BEER IS PROOF THAT GOD LOVES US AND WANTS US TO BE HAPPY!”

Although my favorite proof is:
“He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; And WINE THAT MAKETH GLAD THE HEART OF MAN, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart.” Psalm 104:14-15

Actually, I suspect you do feel that way. Some study I heard of a long time ago purported to find that most of what is said in jest is in fact believed. The "performance art" is mere disguise. Interesting theory, eh?

Actually, I suspect you do feel that way. Some study I heard of a long time ago purported to find that most of what is said in jest is in fact believed. The "performance art" is mere disguise. Interesting theory, eh?

OH GOD! NOW I AM FOUND OUT! BY A PSYCHOLOGIST WITH NO DEGREE WHO HAS NEVER MET ME!!!! OHHHHH, the humanity!

So what's it to ya either way, Sparky?

43
posted on 04/13/2012 9:10:22 AM PDT
by Lazamataz
(Shut up and drill.)

Well, it’s just that there really are people, some of them very close to me, who come under that same dark cloud from time to time, and I like to try and help them see God in a better light than that. It usually cheers them up. I’m just trying to give to them what God has given to me. Over my life I’ve given God plenty of really good reasons to hate me, yet he continues to come through for me when I need him most. I genuinely love him for that. That’s all there is in it for me. Honest.

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